It takes a truly exceptional affordability crisis to put Bill Ackman and Zohran Mamdani on the same side of the barricade. Yet this month the billionaire hedge fund manager and New York’s democratic socialist mayor found common cause over an unlikely grievance: the cost of getting into the US Open. Ackman took objection to the cost of a grounds pass listed for $363.
Mamdani responded to the broader uproar by securing 1,000 tickets for New York residents at $100 apiece, prompting more than 336,000 people to apply for them. Somewhere between the two sits the uneasy economics of the modern US Open, where a $65 ticket with no guaranteed seat on any court can fetch more than five times that amount on the tournament’s resale marketplace. For generations the US Open has traded on its reputation as the people’s slam.
Take the 7 train to Queens, buy a grounds pass and spend the day milling about within a few feet of the world’s best tennis players. But as the final major of the season begins in earnest on Sunday, that democratic ideal has been confronted with a basic problem: more and more of the people are being priced out. The USTA’s mission is to promote the sport of tennis.
How is a $363 ground pass consistent with this mission?” It was a striking complaint from someone who rarely has reason to balk at the price of admission – in more ways than one – and more striking still when Mamdani weighed in days later. The two men have spent much of the past year fighting from opposite sides of New York’s affordability debate, with Ackman sparing no expense to prevent Mamdani’s election last November. Apparently all it took to set aside months of political blood sport for a temporary detente was the obscene cost of getting into the tennis.
The simplest explanation for the US Open sticker shock is also the most obvious: demand has exploded. But so, too, has what the USTA is selling. Over the past decade the Open has transformed itself into something closer to a three-week New York cultural festival, a late-summer collision of sport, fashion, celebrity and conspicuous consumption.
The $23 Honey Deuce is no longer merely a cocktail but a souvenir, status marker and social media prop. Celebrities fill the suites, influencers populate sponsor boxes and Arthur Ashe Stadium can feel less like the main show court than an aperitif to fashion week. The Open surpassed one million visitors for the first time in 2024 and shows little sign of slipping back below that mark.
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